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<title>Value Scan Relative... (command Search/Value Scan Relative...)</title>
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<p><div class="title">Value Scan Relative... (command Search/Value Scan Relative...)</div><br>
<br>
Search for sequences that match a list of relative offsets in a
file. The dialog allows you to define a sequence of relative
offsets by entering decimal, hex, or ascii values as well as byte-wildcards.
The dialog also allows you to choose whether you want to search
for the next instance in a specific direction. This feature is
best put to use on non-western alphabets** or for searching for
abstract data like pointers. You can save results to a file from
this dialog. <br>
<br>
If I want to search for string but I don't have a table for the
file's text encoding then I have to search for it relatively.
This works only if the string does not make use of DTE. Please
note that the reason <a href="../02/02-DTE.html">DTE (Dual Tile Encoding)</A> is considered to be
a pain among table makers is because you cannot easily search for
strings relatively if they use DTE. <a href="../02/02-MTE.html">MTE (Multiple Tile Encoding)</A>
is hated even more. In addition, it must be noted that just
because a string was found in the file matching your search
string it does not necessarily mean that it IS in fact equal to
the search string. It just means that the found string's
characters are RELATED to each other in exactly the same way as
the search string's characters are RELATED to each other. <br>
<br>
Technique Explanation:<br>
<br>
You may wish to read about <a href="../02/02-Text_Encoding.htm">&quot;Text Encoding&quot;</A> before you
read this.<br>
<br>
What relative search does is it will take a word you give it that
you know is going to<br>
appear somewhere in your file, and searches for words of the same
length whose characters are related in same way (by the same
offsets) as the characters in the search string. It searches by
assuming that if the letter A is for example entry $00, then B
must be entry $01, and so on. It uses the offset between each
character in a string as the comparison. For example, the
difference in the offset between A and B is almost always 1. So,
if we searched for &quot;ABBA&quot; then we would find all words
whose characters have offsets matching (1,0,1) as &quot;ABBA&quot;
does. This can turn up a number of inaccurate matches if a short
string with common letters is used.<br>
<br>
**It can be used to search for strings using the western-alphabet
but only strings completely composed of either all uppercase, all
lowercase, or all numbers will produce good results.</p>
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